


The Super Solider, the Russian Spy, the Archer, the Cat and the Mouse

by wildpeace



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clintasha - Freeform, Deaf Clint Barton, F/M, Gen, Natasha and Steve are bros, a random small thing that happened, cartoons, cartoons are always awesome, deaf!Clint, if the characters don't talk you don't have to understand what they're saying, short fic, subtle clintasha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-29
Updated: 2014-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-27 11:33:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2691359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildpeace/pseuds/wildpeace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Steve thinks everything from his past is gone and forgotten.  A chance encounter with two of his team mates proves him wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Super Solider, the Russian Spy, the Archer, the Cat and the Mouse

**Author's Note:**

> Just a random one-shot I wrote as a fill to a headcanon suggestion a long time ago. 
> 
> NB: Tom and Jerry first aired in 1940.

The morning wasn't exactly one they wanted to remember. Asides from their victory, it had been a shit show from start to finish, meaning they had all limped back to Stark Tower (or Avengers Tower, Steve supposes it is now) nursing bruises, frustrations, and a lot of ill feelings.

Steve's first reaction had been to take his irritation out on the punching bags in the gym, and he'd pounded them until his knuckles were bloody and he was sure his shoulders would've been screaming protest, if they still did that sort of thing. He knows Tony and Bruce have slunk off to the lab, to nurse scrapes and wounded pride, and he hasn't seen Thor for almost 2 months. He knows splitting time between two realms - and wow how much that still blows his mind - must be difficult, but he misses Thor's laid back, calming influence. Steve supposes when you live for thousands of years, bad days are less trifling. 

Pushing buttons in the elevator, he decides what he needs is a comfortable chair, and to get lost for a while in a good book. He'd had books as friends far longer than many actual friends - besides Bucky - and this seemed like the perfect moment to disappear for a while into someone else's world. 

The doors slide open into the common area, and for a moment he's confused by the dim lighting. It's late afternoon, but the sun is still up and bright, and so the shadows and shade throw him for a moment. All the blinds are closed and the lights turned off, and he's about to go for a switch when a voice stops him.

"Can you leave them off?"

Looking over, he finally catches sight of Natasha curled into the corner of the overstuffed couch, her hair pulled back from her face - probably to stay clear of the gash across her temple - and one leg propped on the coffee table in front, wrapped ankle resting on a cushion. Tipping her head back to look at him, she continues, "It hurts his head less."

Quickly pulling his hand back from the switch, he moves towards the couch, and sees first a pair of long, denim-clad legs stretched out from Natasha's side, and then craning his neck, the torso and face of his friend, the archer. Clint's head rests on Natasha's thigh, his eyes half-lidded, and a lump the size of a balled-up fist peeking through his hairline. 

Steve has lived and worked with Black Widow and Hawkeye for over a year, and despite all their abilities, skills and stories of insanely dangerous missions, it's still in these moments where they are so unguardedly 'Natasha and Clint' that they surprise him the most. Normally so reticent about displaying their relationship in front of others - to the point where it took a number of months for the other inhabitants of the tower to even confirm whether or not there was a relationship to hide, even with Tony's needling - it makes Steve almost want to avert his eyes from the blatant, though completely innocent, tableau before him. 

Reaching up, he scratches the back of his neck. "Concussion?" he speaks, finally, keeping his voice low in consideration of the man half-awake in her lap.

"Mmhmm," she murmurs in acknowledgement, letting her fingers reach up and run through Clint's hair, close to the bump but not touching. "But the Doctor said no internal bleed."

"That's good," Steve replies, and then asks, "How are you feeling Hawk?" 

For a second, the lack of response leaves him worried, but then Natasha's low, lilting laugh reaches his ears. Something about the throaty, smoky chuckle makes Steve feel like blushing, and he watches as she strokes the side of Clint's neck. "He took his hearing aids out," she tells Steve simply. "Too much auditory input makes the headache worse."

"Yeah?"

Tapping the small black box that sits on the arm of the chair - the one that Steve's pretty sure houses Clint's hearing aids when not in his ears - Natasha nods. "They don't just amplify voices. Traffic noise, the refrigerator humming, footsteps. All of it. It's a lot to take in when your brain's trying to escape your skull - that's why we're watching this." She nods her head towards the television, and it's the first time Steve takes note of what is happening on screen. With the volume down low, it had passed him by, but now he watches as a little brown cartoon mouse (and seriously? Clint and Natasha watch cartoons?) hits a grey cat in the face with a bowling ball, causing the cat to split apart into little bowling pins and topple over.

The memories hit him as hard as the bowling ball. "Tom and Jerry!" he grins, because it's the first time something has been so simply, innocently there from his past. Something he remembers. Something that was once his, in his previous life.

Natasha doesn't seem to understand the importance of his words. Instead, she nods. "Clint watched a lot of it after the accident," she says simply and Steve doesn't need to ask her to clarify. Though it had happened years before he had known them, Steve's pieced together from passing snippets the story about Bahrain, and the explosion that had permanently damaged Clint's eardrums, and some of the aftermath. "You don't need to be able to hear to know what's happening." 

Steve's pretty sure Clint is sleeping anyways, or at least he's pretty sure he would be with Natasha's hands stroking his hair that way, so he's somewhat surprised that Natasha still has it on. For the woman who didn't have a childhood, he wonders at the appeal. 

"They used to play these before the movies," Steve admits, leaning his hip against the empty arm chair and watching the chase ongoing on the screen. "You spent a quarter and you got a news reel, a cartoon and the show." 

His smile is wry, and Natasha smirks back. "You watched these cartoons? I didn't realise they were that old. No offense," she adds with a quirk of her shoulder, shifting a little to get comfortable without jostling Clint from his relaxed position. 

"None taken," Steve smiles back, because seventy years on the ice makes most of what he remembers old and invariably defunct. "I didn't think anything like this would still be playing." 

He stands and watches for a long moment, and he swears if he concentrates, he can almost smell the lingering scent of tobacco, taste the popcorn, and hear Bucky's laughing voice in his ear. Something must show on his face, because Natasha's smile changes. Sometimes he forgets that she lost a whole childhood, a whole nation, a whole history too. "You want to sit down?" she offers gently, her voice soft. "We have a whole disk to watch." 

He knows he should go. He should go and leave them their peace and time together. But he finds his body moving forward, dropping into the squashy seat of the arm chair. 

On the screen, a new episode starts, and he watches as Jerry floods the kitchen, switches the refridgerator to freeze, and skates across the floor. "I love this one," he grins, and when he turns his head, Natasha is watching him, a small, knowing smile on her face. 

"Me too."


End file.
